19/6!

"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse) 06/19/2015 at 09:42 • Filed to: Mercedes, W196, Desmodromic

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Have we a car for today?

Why yes. Yes we do.

Have a brace of Mercedes W196s, open and closed wheel. Either way they used a 2.5 litre straight eight with desmodromic valves and direct fuel injection (recently rediscovered for car engines) which had originally been designed for the DB engines used in WW2 aircraft.

The car proved quite successful and won every race bar one in the 1955 world championship.

In 2013 the only W196 in private hands changed those hands for £19.7m.

Hot Takes Salesman > Cé hé sin 06/19/2015 at 11:21

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Was that the model that, em, exploded in the Le Mans disaster,

Cé hé sin > Hot Takes Salesman 06/19/2015 at 11:34

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A version of it, yes. The Le Mans car was a 300 SLR, based on the chassis and drivetrain of the W196 but with the engine bored out to 3 litres.

It didn’t explode, it crashed when the driver (who was trying to drive the entire race by himslef) failed to avoid another car and as it was going something like 150 mph at the time the force of the impact was such that the car broke up and bits of it went flying through the spectators. Some parts went at roughly the height of a person so if you were below average height you survived. Otherwise you got a blow to the top of the head which killed you.

Hot Takes Salesman > Cé hé sin 06/19/2015 at 14:23

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I was referring to the ensuing fire where hot balls of magnesium shot off the car as firefighters tried using water to douse it. I think the story was that the Jaguar driver, Hawthorn, unexpectedly swerved into the pits, causing a chain reaction

Cé hé sin > Hot Takes Salesman 06/19/2015 at 14:25

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That particular car knew lots of ways to kill people.

Hot Takes Salesman > Cé hé sin 06/19/2015 at 14:35

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I mean, some of these men had survived the Second World War, and really needed that close-to-death adrenaline. Racing was ludicrously dangerous really until 1994.